Room 237

Just got done watching it. My initial reaction: "Wow. These people are nuts."

Don't get me wrong - this is a fun watch as long as you don't take any of it too seriously. I know the film pretty well, but these "analysts" go out of their way to ignore the obvious in order to drive on to their wacky conclusions.

Thanks to the infinite paranoia pool that we call the Internet, the mythology about The Shining is outstripping the history of the film itself. This is less about the movie but more about people who look for conspiracies in every corner. Faked moon landings? Set geometry? Minotaurs? Absurd, sure, but how different are they from those people that deny birth certificates or imagine black UN helicopters or, most recently, those who say Sandy Hook was faked. These Deniers create their own logic, disallow any reality that doesn't fit and then warp the facts to fit their conclusions. I think this film really does a great job showing these people for what they are - delusional and and self-obsessed.

We can let them be entertaining, but we can never take any of what they say seriously.

An exploration of various interpretations of Stanley Kubrick's horror film, "The Shining" (1980).

What this film is not: a reveal of any deeper symbolism in "The Shining". The theories here rely on personal interpretations, and in some cases they are not relying on very much fact to build such opinions. The minotaur section in particular is a bit nutty, because it has us build a vision off of a minotaur that is not even there.

What this film is: a look at the theories of some very brilliant but clearly eccentric people. Despite the connections these people see in random numbers and images, Kubrick was not making a statement about American Indians, the Holocaust or the Apollo program, nor was he using "minotaur imagery".

So, if you are looking to find out more about the deeper meaning of the now-classic film, this might not be the place for that. Ask Jack Nicholson, or Vivian Kubrick, or someone who was actually on the set.

I really hoped this would somewhat focus on the film 'The Shining', but it doesn't. It's all about how people, who I have never heard of, think about it and how they interpret it. Sorry, I don't need strangers to tell me what to think. My recommendation is to avoid.

This film is essentially people who are obsessed with Stanley Kubrick's The Shining spinning out their theories about what the film means. It reveals little about Kubrick's vision or intent and everything about their specific and sometimes downright crazy views about the world as expressed through their interpretations of Kubrick's movie. Room 237 demonstrates the deep impact a film can have when something about it resonates with the particular psychology or beliefs of members of its audience. The real brilliance of The Shining is that it created an almost palpable atmosphere of dread while remaining enigmatic and opaque. It's a Rorschach test to be freely interpreted by its audience.

Being an avid Kubrick fan, I could not wait to see this film even though The Shining is one of my least favorite of his movies. I did enjoy Room 237; it's a fun movie. Like Kubrick himself you never know whether it's being serious or poking fun at the viewer. Some of the "hidden messages" that Kubrich is supposed to have put into The Shining are patently ridiculous but some others will make you want to go & watch The Shining again, and again! The masterstroke here is when someone states that Kubrick was meticulous about arranging every frame in his movies (which every Kubrick fan knows to be true) and no object appears in any frame by accident. Of course the film makers then take this to an extreme but it does make for a quite funny and entertaining time.